


Nitty, Gritty, Improvisation

by noisystar



Category: BioShock
Genre: Developing Relationships, Plasmid Development!, flirtation, smuggling ring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-09
Updated: 2015-04-09
Packaged: 2018-03-22 00:27:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3708517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noisystar/pseuds/noisystar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was a time when Frank Fontaine was building his industry and people were only starting to fear him.</p><p>There was a time Andrew Ryan admired his ambition.</p><p> </p><p>  <i>“You wanted to be the butter and egg man? Wanted all your little yuppie fantasies? I got you outta the fish house, and that's all you're ever gonna get in Ryan's city. So, you either listen to me or end up right back with fishes, only next time you'll be on their end of the hook.”</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Nitty, Gritty, Improvisation

**Author's Note:**

> Another story I started and I have fun thinking about and wish I had more time to write! Hopefully I can find it! I'm open to suggestions for this, especially writing in more characters.

Rapture, the underwater city, was a stage, its lyrical director and headliner Andrew Ryan. Under his visionary direction, steel spires were erected from the seafloor. Andrew Ryan wrote his script to command the city to pre-set roles of dog-eat-dog capitalism. Then came along Frank Fontaine, an actor that refused scripts and only improvised.

Frank took on any role with ownership and would put to rest any argument that he would ever be unable to pursue a role to the down-and-grittiest, and he rolled his sleeves the same way in his approach to a role as he would to a challenge. That was why he still teased the cryptic note in his hand he had been carrying since departing his office:

_The Hotel Monseñor, 11 PM._

Eventually, he folded the note into his pocket and remembered the woman walking beside him; “--need more, everything! Time, money, test subjects! What good is ADAM if I don't have materials to research and exploit it? Mr. Fontaine-- Mr. Fontaine, are you listening?”

“Hmm. Yes.” Fontaine murmured and keyed the code to his suite. The woman twisted her tongue between her open teeth in a show of impatience that had become amusingly routine on her. Fontaine coaxed her into the elevator; “Don't worry your priceless head about the switch and dirty, Tenenbaum. You'll get what you need.” He easily noticed the blush that smudged into her otherwise colorless cheeks, like a sheet dipped in blood. The innocence of white, swayed by an obscene red—another cue open to his manipulation for his repertoire, one Fontaine tested with a hand guiding the small of her back.

The elevator reached Fontaine's suite, and Dr. Tenenbaum flew out of the doors as soon as her narrow body could fit through. “You like the view?” Fontaine said, watching the stoic bridge of shoulders that walled off any resemblance to a woman. “Cost more than a nickle. Think I'll buy out the pads next door, have it expanded. Once we get more of your Gene Tonics, that is.”

Dr. Tenenbaum threw her briefcase onto the first available table, her face tactfully shuttered behind loose clumps of brown hair. “I've developed entirely new sequence of gene-splicing. ADAM is not restricted to the realm of medicinal enhancement—Its properties could give men abilities like what Mengele and those German _hampelmänner_ yearned for with their child's play in twin experimentation. You think Gene Tonics are your “golden goose”, Mr. Fontaine? _This_ \--” She claimed a vial from the opened briefcase and raised it to Fontaine's face. An ooze of red churned eerily inside. “--is your golden goose. Man once created fire in cave with sticks, yes? Now man will create fire with nothing but his own hands. Yes, Fontaine, I speak literally--This will grant ability to light fire from fingertips. But I am in need of test trials to perfect it.” Fontaine had scarcely a whiff of a penny before Tenenbaum stole the vial close to her and clasped it like a baby. She gazed at him expectantly; the blushing young woman who had entered Fontaine's home was cast out in favor of the hungry scientist before him. “So before you are buying more closets, _bitte_ \--put your money to use to getting me more hosts and test subjects.” 

“Walking flamethrowers? Hell, I could come up with some good use for that. How are the side-effects shaping up? Addiction, brains-to-jello--”

“Mutation.” Tenenbaum said and saw the taste of dread pinch Fontaine's mouth; he had been hoping that particular symptom was swept under the rug by now.

Fontaine rolled the bitter pill of her answer around his mouth. “Still no luck for the hopheads, huh? Do me a favor and work on that bit. Make an anti-mutation Gene Tonic. We don't want to be trapped staring at ugly mugs every day at the market, do we?” Tenenbaum, already in heels, poised on her toes in an attempt to meet Fontaine's eye-level, her face alive with fury inspired by the dear subject; she had pages and pages of scientific findings on ADAM to unload on Fontaine explaining exactly why an “anti-mutation Gene Tonic” was so beyond their reach. The clang of a doorbell came first, and Fontaine and his breezy smile floated away to answer. 

Tenenbaum spoke insistently to Fontaine's back; “The properties of ADAM are, like the nature of its vessel, this sea slug, parasitic—the testing and components necessary for-”

She toppled over the next words in the same way one might topple over in a dizzy spell. Revealed in the elevator access was a cluster of three men in the sullied uniforms of bottom-feeder laborers, their faces similarly muddied with an array of substances. Amidst the splatter was was an unmistakable red nuance of fresh blood. The three were anchored to a ragged mass in the middle that had the miserable flop of a drowned dog. There was a drenched rat of hair towards the top of the rags, and as the three men hauled into the apartment, the mass became a nearly indistinguishable fourth.

“ _Wilkins?_ ” Fontaine hissed. His romantic eyes began to widen and bulge with the pressure of bursting patience.

The man addressed, Wilkins, answered hastily, “Fontaine, we had a p-p-problem at the Fisheries, caught this one tryin' to sandbag us, get us a one-way ticket to the cooler and the like--” 

“Somewhere in that explanation you better have the number of a fucking fantastic housemaid for staining my new damn floor.” Fontaine, despite his gripe, was not looking at the smeared drops of blood that followed the slack lump of legs bound in a blanket of twisted burlap. He moved slowly, tentatively, from the door, adding up the elements of the scene to decide what reaction the scenario deserved, as though the anticipation and dread of his onlookers were a thing he controlled for sport. These men were surrounded by his territory, what he owned; he had control of every element.

Wilkins's jaw trembled; his eyes were the glassy pink of paranoia fatigued from an afternoon of use. “It's Jimmy, these guys saw him talkin' with Ryan's watchdog... Sullivan.” His mouth continued moving as he tried desperately to spit out a sentence that would reverse the transformation of Fontaine: the pillow-talking, winsome brute had furled his hands into murderous hooks, and his shoulders became the hunched awning of a gargoyle. “S-see, they saw Jimmy talkin' to that lawman, so they jumped the kid and found a keen supply of Bibles on him, like, like he was makin' to expose the whole trick! I'm not a dummy, Fontaine, just 'cause the Big Man don't put on no laws, well that just makes him judge, jury and executioner.”

Wilkins had impressively not backed away from the terrible animal that Fontaine had become, who was looming over Wilkins like a bear over its aggravator. A sober voice trickled in from behind him; “Uch, you idiots think killing solve all problems until you have body and evidence to dispose of.”

Fontaine's fist spoke before his salivating jowls, snagging the wet collar of Wilkins's shirt and dragging him to his snarl-sharpened nose. “WHAT ARE YOU DOING BRINGING A STIFF OF ANDREW RYAN'S TO MY _HOUSE?_ ” The other two men struggled with their cargo when Wilkins was detached, one hissing a curse on what he had somehow gotten himself into. Fontaine held Wilkins in paralyzing claws; “You just drew a long, fat, bloody arrow, and it's pointing right to my door! In case you failed to notice, I have journalists sitting on my front fucking step! Did I put some senile castrated mutt in charge of my smuggling ring, Peachy?”

“But we didn't-- Hey, I didn't ask for this! I just wanted somethin' better, I just want-”

“You wanted to be the butter and egg man? Wanted all your little yuppie fantasies? I got you outta the fish house, and that's all you're ever gonna get in Ryan's city. So, you either listen to me or end up right back with fishes, only next time you'll be on their end of the hook.” Fontaine shoved Wilkins back into line once satisfied, his face pink and buttery with sweat. He looked at the blood again, thinking, when one of the other men dared to speak:

“Hey, Mr. Fontaine, we didn't--”

“Shut up,” Fontaine drawled. A moan came from somewhere within the gaggle of slimy men. “Close your goddamned heads--”

“Fontaine,” Tenenbaum said with amusement. “I don't know which more stupid... bringing corpse of Ryan spy to your home, or bringing him still breathing.”

Another moan seeped like slime from among the smugglers, and realization seeped its fetid coils around Fontaine. He looked up, his mouth shaped by the snarling lips of an animal. 

“Puh... puh.... please,” Said the shapeless mass held off the floor by the two men. “Don't... hurt... me.”

Wilkins stuttered, “I tried to tell ya Fontaine, we didn't... kill the poor guy, for Pete's sake, we just didn't know what to do with him, 's why we had to come to you... Boss.”

The wretch gasped as though he had little room available in his lungs. “Please... I'm not... working for... Ryan... I promise... Please. I took some Bibles... for my... family. Please don't... do this...”

Dr. Tenenbaum's heels clicked on the floor. “Yes, I think this one much bigger problem than corpse.”

Fontaine whipped away from the smugglers and stared past Dr. Tenenbaum. He had the open, hungry mouth of a beast. “You're right, Peach. What a shame it would be to lose a good pair of hands,” He said vacantly, his step as slow and deliberate as his speech as he strode towards Dr. Tenenbaum. “I put effort into choosing my men... each one. I think there is a compromise to be made here.” 

The bleeding man panted, “Yes, please, Fontaine... I have kids. I was... gonna bring the Bibles... to my kids. I'll... I'll pay. I won't... do it... again.” 

“I'm takin' a leap of faith with you, Wilkins... I'm goin' to give ya another chance.” Dr. Tenenbaum watched Fontaine's face as he drew closer; bated under an absurd grin was an eager ferocity. To the disconcerted smugglers, Fontaine was sharing a cozy whisper with his Kraut twist; his sudden imminent presence came upon her like feed to a mindless craving. His eyes moved to hers in an exclusive message, and she realized what he had been staring at only when he reached behind her towards the table.

Fontaine left Tenenbaum in a whirl of motion that carried him quickly back to the waiting smugglers. “First, looks like I need to tighten the screws-- You lot ain't working in a hock shop, this is the real grift, and your lives are the cush!” He snatched the arm of one of the men and stretched it out, simultaneously wielding Dr. Tenenbaum's syringe above his head before plunging the needle into the man's exposed wrist. The man screamed, and Fontaine continued with a raised voice. “Hey now, this might burn a little, but I'll send the Doc with ya to show you how to use it.” 

The other men looked on in horror as the man stumbled to the ground screaming, staring at his arm as blisters began to erupt from his skin. The skin bubbled like boiling water, bursting and peeling, the edges of the openings curling as though singed in a fire. The man cried for help, his skin going pale but for his arm, which was turning a bright, hot red. Strenuously the blazing color took over his arm, and the man looked as though he would pass out from heat stroke. Then, in the distorted, smoky air above his arm, darts of fire began to flicker and stretch and become long flames.

Fontaine looked at Wilkins, his face furious again. “Now make sure everything is burned. All of it. Leave no trace of him.” The fear in Wilkins's face became ugly with confusion, but the bleeding man understood enough.

“What? No, please, Mr. Fontaine! It's not true! For the love of God, It's not true!”

“WHY THE HELL IS HE STILL TALKING?” Fontaine roared. “You got yourselves in this situation, so you're either gonna make it a clean sneak, or you're all goin' to end up ashes!”

Fontaine tore away from them and headed towards the door. “There you are Dr. Tenenbaum,” He said as he passed her. “Your first test subject.”

Tenenbaum had already scribbled a couple notes onto a pad. “And where are you going?”

Fontaine grabbed his coat--the one whose pocket kept safe the _Hotel Monseñor_ note--and stepped into the elevator. “This was just one rotten egg. Need to make sure there ain't any more poisoning the nest.”


End file.
